For Jackie Greene, Monterey Pop represents full circle

Jackie Greene has a lot of odd connections to the Monterey International Pop Festival. He was born in Salinas, within spitting distance of the Monterey Bay — on Jimi Hendrix’s birthday, no less. His mother attended the original concert in 1967. And he’s played on the fairground stage several times as part of the Monterey Jazz Festival. On Saturday, June 17, Greene will return for the Monterey Pop 50th anniversary concert, adding another achievement to a rich career that includes releasing a series of acclaimed solo albums, serving as a temporary member of the Black Crowes, playing in Dead offshoots with Bob Weir and Phil Lesh, and leading the group Trigger Hippy.

Q: What does it mean to play the Monterey Pop festival?

A: Well, I’m honored. Looking at the lineup, it looks like it’s going to be tremendous. My course of action in these situations is to do the best I can to pull my own weight.

Q: Unlike other festivals, there’s just one stage so people aren’t going to walk away from you to watch some dude in a mask playing EDM on a laptop.

A: That’s a good point. It’s old school. Having the focal point be in one spot, I kind of wish more festivals were like that. Festivals have become like the app store, where there’s too many choices. Music deserves to have a focus. That’s a good way to do it.

Q: At the original festival, the acts that stood out were the ones who pulled a stunt: Jimi Hendrix lighting his guitar on fire; the Who smashing their instruments; Otis Redding collapsing onstage. You got anything like that planned?

A: Well, I more than likely won’t be setting a guitar on fire. We’ll do our best to let the music speak. These days, I hesitate to set anything on fire in a public place. There are very few guitars I own that I would be OK setting on fire anyway.

Q: Do you feel part of that lineage of artists who played the first time?

A: In the micro sense and the macro sense, I feel like I belong to the lineage of rock ’n’ roll musicians in general. There’s a shared language that gets passed down. There is a shared destiny, if you will. Maybe some of that is on display at a festival like this. Not that I have anything against EDM, but this is not that. This is a festival about rock ’n’ roll music. That’s a worthy thing to be a part of.

Q: Your career has been full of bucket list stuff — some of it maybe not necessarily for you but definitely for some people. Is there a moment that stands out?

A: There’s more than one moment. There are moments that are constantly happening in my life and career that remind me that this is what I’m supposed to be doing. Those things that maybe weren’t on my list that I got to do, I got to check off that list because I was open to the possibility of them being there. I wasn’t myopic in my goals. Just because I wandered down this road, what people might call the jam band scene, doesn’t make my goal less true. By allowing that to take place it has opened me up to more opportunities, not less.

Q: Preconceptions aside, it’s cool to find with such an engaged audience.

A: Our fans love what we do, but they love music more. That’s a direct reflection of how I feel. Circling back to Monterey, that could be what this festival represents. It’s the grander vision of the whole thing. I’m not afraid to work and take on challenges I may fail at. If you stick to things that are comfortable then I think you can stagnate quite quickly. If you avail your mind to the possibility of challenging it and doing things outside your comfort zone, it can only make you stronger and better.

A: I’m 36, so I’ve been at this since I was 21. There’s a thing I remember feeling distinctly in my early 20s, where it’s exactly that. You have a much narrower view of life in general. I grew out of that and realized the more I work with other people and the more I’m open to learning, the more opportunities I end up getting for myself. Then you think, maybe I didn’t know as much as I did when I was a kid. The funny thing is you have to go through that period of life when you think you know everything to get to the point where you realize you don’t know anything.

Aidin Vaziri is the pop music critic for The San Francisco Chronicle. He interviews artists, reviews concerts, reports on emerging trends on the local scene, covers festivals and keeps an ear out for new music. He has written for Rolling Stone, National Geographic, MTV, Vibe, Amazon and other outlets.